Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Having disappeared from the daily headline news, Greece – whose political sovereignty may or may not exist any more, following the farcical development from this summer’s “referendum” and the subsequent third bailout – was supposed to be fixed, if only for the time being, and its economy and society back on a normally functioning track….
The Four Horsemen of Gentrification. Then I saw when the Landlord broke one of the rent-controlled seals. I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Gentrify.” I looked, and behold, a green horse, and he who sat on it had a mason jar; and a fedora was his…
The Driggs, a luxury apartment building in Brooklyn, received a $631,000 tax break this year. (Cezary Podkul/ProPublica) As gleaming new housing towers spring up around New York City, thousands of new rent-stabilized apartments are coming onto the market. And in return for following rent limits, developers get a share of $1 billion in property…
Begin: Right Rail Advertisement Container End: Right Rail Advertisement Container Begin: WordPress Article Content In California, a state built on the idealism and tacit cruelty of real estate capitalism, no one is innocent. That’s no different with Airbnb and Proposition F, merely the latest of San Francisco’s Brobdingnagian sagas over land-use politics that will go down in today’s election….
Jackie Rodriguez Peña prepares a frog smoothie at her stand at the Mercado de las Brujas in Lima, Peru. In Lima’s Mercado de las Brujas, or witches market, Peruvians gather to dicker for talismans and ancient medicines. Giant slugs larger than a water bottle sweat sticky slime. Dried llama fetuses hang from the ceiling, their…
Short-term rentals are not a significant factor in SF’s housing shortage. So why are people going crazy about this one company? Disclaimer: If you want to contact the author of this piece and accuse me of something, you can tweet at me. I also wrote a convenient FAQ for people who wanna call me “astroturf.” *** Last year,…
November 7th, 2015 at the Brooklyn Commons, 7pm Join us for a screening of Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner followed by a panel discussion in conjunction with our upcoming course Replaceable Parts: Becoming Cyborg in America. Panelists will discuss the film through the lens of contemporary technology studies, cybernetics, and cyborg theory while paying particular attention to questions of media, mediation,…
New Yorkers were out in their best zombie Mets uniforms, Swedish Chef costumes, and Pizza Rat outfits last night all across NYC, with the Halloween Parade alone a cornucopia of audacious and colorful get-ups. But there was no question what the best costume in NYC was last night, and you couldn’t see it anywhere in…
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announces the firing of Ben Fields, a senior deputy who forcibly removed a female student who refused to leave her high school math class at Spring Valley High School on Monday. Alex Sanz/AP hide caption itoggle caption Alex Sanz/AP Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announces the firing of…
Watch how the Syrian civil war became the mess it is today. Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO After four-plus years of fighting, Syria’s war has killed at least 250,000 people and displaced 12 million people. And, though it started as a civil war, it’s become much more than that. It’s a proxy war that has…